


Warmth

by SilverDagger



Category: Claymore
Genre: F/F, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 07:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3886768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn't that wanting things frightens her, exactly. It's just that she never quite learned how. (Jean and Clare, before the battle of Pieta)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warmth

Late at night, on the eve of battle, Jean sits beside the window in a cabin in Pieta and rests her head in her hands. Somewhere outside, she can hear someone - Helen - singing an off-key battle-song, and, after a moment, other voices joining in. They're drunk, from the sound of it, raucous and laughing and eager to wring every last bit of life from the night before the morrow comes, and Jean wonders what it would be like to go out and join them. She feels the chill creeping in through the glass, more awareness than sensation. Their kind are inured to cold, and it's been a long time since she felt the sting of winter.

She doesn't miss it, that weakness. She sees no reason why anyone would. But she can remember the feeling of being someplace cold and stepping into someplace warm, stomping snow off her boots in the orange glow of lamplight and knowing that she's home. Live or die tomorrow, it's not something she'll ever feel again.

The door creaks open, bringing a gust of wind that sets the candles to shivering, and Jean can't help the smile that tugs at the corners of her mouth when she sees the warrior at the threshold. Clare gives her a rare smile in return, like sun breaking through dark clouds, and for a moment it feels like she had to look away or be blinded.

"You look like something's got you worried," Clare says, and yes, something has, more diffuse than the looming battle - hushed voices in the frozen darkness, Captain Miria's face set in rebellion. When Jean tries to place those images alongside what she knows of loyalty and honor, the pieces don't want to fit. But the word lingers, _rebellion_ , the ghost of it on her tongue like the taste of something forbidden. Before tonight, she wouldn't have believed the Organization would send them out with no purpose but to die, but now she sees the past at a different angle, and knows the Captain isn't wrong.

"I can't blame you," Clare says, and Jean realizes that it's the closest she's ever come to admitting that she too is weak, or that she bleeds.

"I know," she says, and turns back to the window, the falling snow. She's not good with words like she is with actions, obedience and the weight of a blade in her hands, but it bothers her to hear what she does in Clare's voice and say nothing. "There's no need for blame. We do what we can, that's all."

"And if that isn't enough?" Clare asks.

"It is," Jean says, willing herself to believe it. She knows what it's like to welcome death, but some things scare her still, and one of them is falling without a fight, doing any less than what must be done. And _rebellion_ , that too - but that, at least, is no longer in question.

Jean hears the light tread of Clare crossing the room, and then there's the heat of her palms pressed against Jean's shoulders, unexpected, intimately familiar. She cannot feel cold, but she feels warmth as keenly as she remembers it, and it washes over her, radiating out from those points of contact and leaving her light-headed. It's still strange, letting another stand so close behind her with no hint of threat. She would have thought she'd be used to it by now, or at least that it wouldn't render her frozen in place, unguarded. But time doesn't change the way her face heats at the memory of Clare curled against her in the quiet space between sunset and sunrise, no battles to win or lose and only a scattering of stars overhead for company.

It had been simple, out there in the wilderness with only the two of them, shifting firelight and woodsmoke and things said with touch in darkness which can't be told in words.

It's still simple. She has a duty. She will see it through.

She stands and turns, brushes a strand of hair behind Clare's ear and feels her shiver. Sometimes it seems like the most fragile things are the most dangerous - and it isn't that wanting things frightens her, exactly. It's just that she never quite learned how.

"You should get some rest," she says.

" _They're_ not resting," Clare says, casting a glance outside the window as someone throws a bottle against the wall hard enough to shatter, followed by laughter and a string of profanities. "And I doubt anyone else will be, either, unless you want to shut them up."

For a moment, neither of them speak, only listen to the clamor outside, and then Jean says abruptly, "I will. If you want me to."

Clare just looks at her, or something in the distance behind her, and though she thought she meant nothing serious by it, Jean isn't sure anymore whether she's joking or not.

"You mean that," Clare says. "I've told you, you don't need to - "

"I want to."

"If I tell you to pick a fight with five drunken warriors, you will. Because you want to."

"Should I?"

"No, leave them be," Clare says. "There's no need for us to fight each other now." She sits down heavily on the bed, worn thin, looking as tired as Jean feels. For the first time, Jean envisions turning her blade against the men who sent her here and doesn't recoil from the thought.

"I'm here by choice, you know," she says. "Everything I do, it's of my own will."

Clare considers that, and her, then holds out a hand and says, "then stay."

Jean takes a place beside her, and lets herself be drawn down into her arms, the tenuous warmth and shelter of home. It won't last; few things do. But they're here now, alive, and however it ends, Jean is where she belongs. Where she wants to be.


End file.
